The Journal provides minute-by-minute analysis of the Rose Bowl between the Stanford Cardinal and Wisconsin Badgers. Pete McEntegart offers commentary on the game and ESPN telecast, and Rachel Bachman contributes from Pasadena, Calif.

The Rose Bowl typically clings to its traditions like grim death, which thankfully is the fate the godforsaken Bowl Championship Series will face after next season. Yet the 99th edition of The Grandaddy of Them All will be the first featuring a five-loss team led by an interim coach. That’s typically the province of second-tier games named for mortgage companies and starchy vegetables.

But at the Rose Bowl, even new and seemingly unwelcome developments are wrapped in the comforting shroud of familiarity and respectability. Yes, unranked Wisconsin earned the right to play No. 8 Stanford only because Ohio State and Penn State were ineligible for postseason play. And yes, coach Bret Bielema hightailed it from Madison to take the Arkansas job in a curious lateral move. Still, the Badgers have now made three straight trips to the Rose Bowl, and today they will be led by former coach and current athletic director Barry Alvarez, who has a 3-0 Rose Bowl record.

The last of those victories for Alvarez came after the 1999 season against Stanford, and the Cardinal have not returned to Pasadena since. Yet the Cardinal have become a familiar presence among the national elite over the past few seasons, even after coach Jim Harbaugh and star quarterback Andrew Luck departed for the NFL. Second-year coach David Shaw’s team still employs the physical style instilled by Harbaugh, while redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Hogan took over as the starter late in the season to give the Cardinal a dual running-passing threat from the game’s most important position.

Stanford’s Stepfan Taylor may not be a former Heisman Trophy finalist like Wisconsin’s Montee Ball, but both tailbacks will see plenty of action today. In fact, both teams pride themselves on running the ball and stopping the run. It’s just that the Cardinal have done so more consistently this season. Let’s see if Alvarez’s one-game return — former Utah State coach Gary Andersen takes over after this game — can flip that script.

Stanford takes the opening kickoff out to the 20. That’s where Hogan will lead the Cardinal offense. And surprise, surprise, he hands off to Taylor on the first play for a gain of four. Buckle up your chin straps, fellas.

On third and 4, Hogan shows his mobility by scrambling for a first down at the 31. Then Hogan hits one of his giant tight ends, 6-foot-6 Zach Ertz, for 9 yards. Then Taylor rips off a big gain to put the ball into Badgers territory.

Touchdown, Cardinal! Wide receiver Kelsey Young takes the pitch on an end-around 16 yards for the score. Jordan Williamson makes the extra point for a 7-0 lead. Stanford got in position with some trickeration, as wideout Drew Terrell turned a triple reverse into a flanker pass to Jamal-Rashad Patterson, who climbed the ladder to make a terrific catch of a wounded duck for a gain of 30+ yards. Great drive by Stanford.

Kenzel Doe elects to run the kickoff out from the end zone. Bad decision. He only makes it to the 13. Then the Badgers try to match Stanford’s trickeration, but Melvin Gordon tried to throw the ball while running the speed sweep and was absolutely flattened for an incomplete pass. Tack on a Badgers penalty and it’s an ugly start for UW. But no worries — Ball busts a big run out near the 30 for a first down.

Senior quarterback Curt Phillips hasn’t played much in his career until the latter part of this season, and you got an idea why on third and 9, when he threw nowhere near wideout Jared Abbrederis, who was well-covered anyway. Badgers must punt. It rolls dead around the Cardinal 21.

Whoa! Hogan finds Ertz deep, down to the 4. First and goal. The Cardinal offense is really rolling. First Hogan had hit Terrell on a nice rollout, then two Taylor runs put the ball over midfield before the deep strike.

Touchdown, Cardinal! Taylor smashes in for the score. The point-after makes it 14-0. Wow, Stanford made that look easy, needing just five plays to cover 79 yards. They’ve already racked up 159 yards of total offense. This isn’t the Stanford team Alvarez remembers.

Wisconsin picks up what was suddenly looming as a key first down when Ball reels off 5 yards on third and 2. Now linebacker Chase Thomas is flagged for 15 yards for illegal hands to the face and Wisconsin is in Stanford territory for the first time.

Stanford jumps offsides on third and 1 to give the Badgers a free first down. Good thing, too, for the Badgers, because James White appeared to be stopped short out of the Wildcat. Then Gordon picks up 9 yards on the jet sweep before White smashes for another first down. First and goal from the 8 as the first quarter ends and Ball comes back on the field.

Touchdown, Badgers! Wisconsin does it the hard way on third and goal from the 10, as Phillips finds his tight end Jacob Pederson, who stretches in for the score. Or did he? Uh oh. On the replay, it looks like he didn’t get there. They will take a long look at this. The officials now say he was a half-yard short. Fourth and goal.

The Rose Bowl Stadium announcer keeps saying “Mon-TEE” Ball, while the pressbox announcer is saying “Mon-TAY” (as in par-TAY) Ball. This just goes to show you how far Ball has to go in the area of pronunciation public relations. Too bad. With that extra skill, people might have remembered his college career.

Badgers stuffed on fourth down! Alvarez dials up the Wildcat from the half-yard line, but White is stacked up defensive end Ben Gardner in the backfield. As Brent Musberger notes, Badgers fans might well wonder why Ball, the NCAA’s career leader in touchdowns, was on the bench for that play. Alvarez might be missing the press box right about now. But it’s a great goal-line stand for the Cardinal to keep a two-score lead.

The Badgers force a three-and-out to keep Stanford pinned deep. Excellent punt coverage by Usua Amanam to drop Abbrederis as soon as he caught the ball. Still, the Badgers will start in Stanford territory.

It seems the Cardinal offense works much better when it doesn’t start on its own 1. Two healthy runs by Anthony Wilkerson and a Hogan pass to Ty Montgomery put the ball on the Wisconsin 36 in just three plays.

Hogan overthrows Ertz on third and 5. Ertz was open, but Hogan’s pass was too high. That brings out Williamson to attempt a 47-yard field goal. He hooks it nicely through the uprights to push the lead to double digits.

The Badgers dial up a screen on third and 11 but linebacker Shayne Skov slaloms through blockers to drop Ball a few yards short of the first. So it’s a three-and-out. Terrell makes a fair catch at the 32 and Stanford will take over.

Abbrederis catches another deflected pass and steps out of bounds for a first down. Then Phillips gets loose down the sideline on the scramble, ripping off 38 yards down to the 22. The Badgers are in business.

On third and 4, Phillips whistles the ball into a crowd and somehow into the hands of tight end Sam Arneson. How was that not picked off, or at least deflected? But it’s first and goal from about the 7 as Wisconsin calls its second timeout. It has one remaining, so it is possible to run the ball if they would like.

Touchdown, Badgers! Phillips rolls to his left and hits wide receiver Jordan Frederick in the end zone. Huge drive for the Badgers just before the half — and they get the ball to start the second half. Jack Russell hits the extra point to make it 17-14.

The Stanford band, which has made a career out of annoying people, is at it again with a halftime show on cheese. It’s already morphed the word “HOMAGE” into “FROMAGE” and the announcer has made muenster/monster and gouda/good puns. My tummy hurts.

Maybe this Alvarez guy knows what he’s doing after all. For a moment there, it looked like Stanford might roll over Wisconsin like the Badgers did to Nebraska in the Big Ten Championship, but UW righted itself in the second quarter. Phillips hasn’t exactly looked crisp in the passing game, but he muscled just enough balls past a thicket of Stanford defenders and picked up a huge gain with his legs to set up the scoring drive just before the half. Hogan has made more nice throws than Phillips, but he also misfired high a few times to stall drives.

It ended up being an even first half — 219 yards apiece in total offense before that meaningless last play to run out the clock — and sets us up for a promising second half. Really, what more can the neutral fan ask for?

For the record, Montee Ball is a bit ahead of his per-game average of 133 yards per game, with 87 on 17 carries. Stanford’s Stepfan Taylor is behind pace for his 111-yard average, with 44 yards on 9 carries.

Oooh! Hogan throws wildly again and it’s nearly picked by Devin Smith, but he can’t hang on. That makes it matching three-and-outs to start the second half. Abbrederis makes some nice moves on the punt return to set up the Wisconsin offense at its own 44.

Phillips tries a swing pass to White on third and 4, but the Cardinal defense is all over it. The Badgers are reluctant to throw downfield with Phillips, and Stanford knows it. That makes it three straight three-and-outs this half, two for the Badgers. Terrell calls a fair catch on the Stanford 15.

Not to be outdone, the Cardinal offense notches another three-and-out of its own. Clearly I jinxed matters by predicting a good second half. Fine. So now I predict a boring final quarter-and-a-half. Anyway, it’s Badgers ball after yet another punt.

Ouch! Phillips has wide receiver Chase Hammond wide open deep down the left sideline, but his throw floated a bit and Hammond dropped it — in part because he saw he was about to get flattened by fast-closing safety Jordan Richards. What a hit. Thankfully, the officials didn’t rule that it was a hit on a “defenseless receiver,” a rule that drives me nuts. How can a receiver trying to catch the ball be judged as “defenseless”? Does a defender simply have to let him catch the ball and maybe even run for a while before he’s “ready” to be hit? It doesn’t make any sense. Rant over.

Another ouch! Meyer punts on fourth and 17 and is cleaned out by Amanam on the attempted block, but the officials only call the five-yard “running into the kicker” rather than the 15-yard personal foul. Brent and Herbie disagree, and I think they’re right. But it’s Stanford ball inside its own 10.

Guess what — another punt! In fairness, neither of the past two drives has technically been three-and-out, since both quarterbacks ran for a first down on the first play of each drive. So let’s call them four-and-out. Anyway, Abbrederis calls a fair catch at the Wisconsin 27. Now let’s see if either team can keep the ball for at least five plays.

Alvarez playing things close to the vest as he sends out the punt team on fourth and a long 1 from about the Stanford 45. Phillips was stacked up short while trying to scramble for the first down. Excellent gang tackling. Meyer’s punt goes out of bounds at the Stanford 15.

Today’s just-announced attendance at the Rose Bowl: 93,359. And that’s why it’s still one of the most coveted properties in sports. Even in a year with a less-than-stellar matchup, people want to watch.

Hogan keeps it on the bootleg and runs for 13 yards to the 31. Ooh — and now Hogan has Montgomery open deep, but he overthrows him. As Herbie says, that’s the kind of play Hogan needs to make to loosen up a Badgers defense that’s jamming everyone in the box.

Now it’s the Cardinal playing conservative on third and long with a dump-off pass to the back, and the Badgers defense is no more fooled than Stanford’s has been. That brings up yet another punt. Abbrederis returns the kick to the UW 14 as the game slogs on.

Suddenly, LSU-Alabama circa 2011 has broken out as the Cardinal defense stonewalls Ball on third and 1. These defenses are absolutely overwhelming the offenses. Terrell calls a fair catch on the resulting punt, but Wisconsin’s Shelton Johnson doesn’t seem to notice until too late and sideswipes him. That’s a 15-yard penalty, which I believe is a bigger “gain” than either offense has had this half.

Big third down and 1 from the 19. Hogan pitches to Wilkerson running wide, fooling the Badgers, who anticipated something up the middle. Wilkerson gets around the left end to the 11-yard line. Good play call.

Prayers = answered. Sidenote: While Notre Dame has the iconic mural known as Touchdown Jesus, the Rose Bowl has a backdrop of beautiful and distracting mountains that has been known to spawn field goals.

Another huge third down, this time third and 4 from the 5. Hogan rolls out and throws it up for the 6-foot-8 Toilolo, but the pass is a bit too high. So the Cardinal will settle for a field-goal try. Williamson comes out to attempt a 22-yarder. The kick is up… and good!

Interception! Maybe the Badgers should have run every play after all. Amanam corrals a tipped ball at the Stanford 42. Remember that the Badgers have two timeouts. They’re going to have to start calling them soon.

There you have it. One field goal in the final half — more staring contest than football game. But give Wisconsin credit: The Badgers made a game of it despite being the first five-loss team in this game.

Well, it wasn’t a thrilling second half, but the Cardinal likely don’t care after winning their first Rose Bowl since 1972. In the late stages, Stanford flashed the physical toughness that has been its hallmark over its recent renaissance. After neither offense could do anything after intermission, the Cardinal ran the ball just well enough to get in position for the final field goal. That forced Wisconsin to take to the air, which is not the Badgers’ strong suit, and Amanam’s key interception gave the offense the chance to salt it away with one first down. The Cardinal did that with relative ease no matter how many defenders the Badgers crammed onto the line of scrimmage.

Comments (5 of 17)

love the holdiays when football gamesare no longer broadcast on the Big 3 stations. Forces one to upgrade with Comcast or decide who cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

8:30 pm January 1, 2013

Badger frustration wrote:

Can't win with such a vanilla offense. It's gettingreally old watching plays that everyone knows are coming.

8:27 pm January 1, 2013

Steve wrote:

Thank you

8:16 pm January 1, 2013

fred wrote:

Badgers have to throw the ball.

8:01 pm January 1, 2013

alnrita4@msn.com wrote:

Alvarez received $118,000.00 for this
Rose Bowl game---I hope he is donating this to young people who cannot afford to go to college-----now you know why we have problems in the USA

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